Let’s Talk About ‘Noah’: Those Giant ‘Watchers’ Actually Have an Ancient History

Every week, Mashable presents “Let’s Talk About …,” a Monday-morning look back at the biggest, buzziest WTF moments from the weekend’s most talked-about new movies in wide release. If you haven’t seen the film, be warned: This doesn’t just contain spoilers — it is spoilers.

Those “Watcher” rock-monster things were crazy, right?

We’d been reading for weeks about the “giants” who played a huge part in Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s cinematic vision of the Biblical flood story. But nothing came close to hinting at what they turned out to be.

That’s largely because they were purposely never revealed, which itself is bizarre enough.

In this age of movie studio marketing’s rampant oversharing – we get first-look set images, character posters, teasers of teaser trailers, featurettes and merchandise photos before ever setting foot in a theater – Paramount kept a tight lid on the massive, igneous rock-beings.

Paramount was smart to do this. And they’ve got an unexpectedly strong $44 million domestic box-office opening to show for it.

For one thing, Aronofsky’s film was already on the hotseat for overuse of creative license; revealing the Watchers, who probably never came up in your Sunday School, would have only thrown gas on that controversy. For another, keeping them shrouded in mystery while that debate raged on only provided an incentive to make it out to the theater.

But the Watchers are not nearly as out-of-left-field as they may have seemed.

They’re actually mentioned in the Book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish religious text traditionally ascribed to Noah’s great-grandfather. That script, estimated to have been written in multiple stages from 300 B.C. on, never made the Biblical canon, though the authors of the New Testament were surely aware of it.

The book tells of the Watchers, fallen angels tasked with watching over men. But there is nothing in the Dead Sea Scrolls texts to suggest the Watchers were bungalow-sized rock formations with multiple, crustacean-like appendages, glowing eyes and gravelly voices. No, those characteristics are unique to Noah, the movie.

Though the Book of Enoch is unspecific as to their origins, the film presents the Watchers as beings forged of fire, made by “The Creator” (the film never mentions the word “God,” for what it’s worth) on the Second Day — the same day he made the heavens. By Aronofsky’s accounting, they came along well before Adam and Eve.

“We were not stone then, but light,” one explains to Noah early in the movie. “Rock and mud shadowed our glow.”

Indeed, we see one of these luminescent figures as it first smashes to Earth. Its fiery form melts the very rock and soil, until it is enveloped in it; the newly formed crust cools, hardens and breaks. What’s left is a jagged, vaguely humanoid creature made of volcanic boulders and interconnected stones (which looks and moves a lot like the rock monster from "Galaxy Quest," in the image above).

In Enoch, these creatures became covetous of human women, which caused God to forsake them. In Noah, however, they simply fall out of favor with The Creator and are hunted by wicked men — only a few dozen still roam the planet, and they are pretty bitter about their lot in life.

Luckily for Noah, his lineage (he’s from the good side of the Cain/Abel equation) and purpose (to help the Creator cleanse the Earth of man’s wickedness) win them over. That’s a good thing, too, as they become incredibly handy when its’ time to 1) Build an ark the size of a giant airplane hangar in the days before modern logging and construction equipment 2) defend it against a murderous horde hell-bent on getting onboard as the rains finally come.

In that battle, the Watchers witness one of their own get speared to death and lo! His phosphorescent innards, released from their stony shell, go shooting to the heavens. Realizing that the Creator has not given up on them at all, but will beam them up upon their death, they begin to sacrifice themselves one by one in the service of seeing Noah’s ship set sail.

The Watchers may not even be the weirdest thing about Noah, Biblically speaking. Aronofsky lays on thick themes of free will vs. faith, ultimately positing that the Creator does not decide whether to spare mankind from the Flood – He leaves that one up to Noah himself. “There but for the grace of Noah go I,” we might say in the wake of this version of events.

And there are some heavy-handed calls to vegetarianism and environmental austerity measures that distract us from much of the loopy, pseudo-spiritual stuff. So maybe the Watchers should be given a pass here.

Besides, giant rock-based creatures are becoming old hat at the movies anymore.

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